I'm running Debian on an old Dell Vostro 1520 - old and slow, but has
been working fine. Recently the PSU has stopped charging. It is
genuinely empty; if I power down and then try to boot with no power
cable attached the laptop is completely dead.
I guess it's most likely this is a hardware failure, but since I'm
unlikely to find a viable replacement for the battery I'm hoping there
might be some firmware or other software change that could account for it.
upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1
native-path: BAT1
vendor: Dell
serial: 11
power supply: yes
updated: Sat 18 Jul 2020 12:34:19 BST (39 seconds ago)
has history: yes
has statistics: yes
battery
present: yes
rechargeable: yes
state: charging
warning-level: none
energy: 0 Wh
energy-empty: 0 Wh
energy-full: 37.81 Wh
energy-full-design: 48.84 Wh
energy-rate: 0 W
voltage: 9.306 V
percentage: 0%
capacity: 77.4161%
technology: lithium-ion
icon-name: 'battery-caution-charging-symbolic'
/var/log/messages says:
Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [ 21.858825] iTCO_vendor_support:
vendor-support=0
Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [ 21.868799] iTCO_wdt: Intel TCO
WatchDog Timer Driver v1.11
Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [ 21.869780] iTCO_wdt: Found a ICH9M TCO
device (Version=2, TCOBASE=0x0460)
Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [ 21.869983] iTCO_wdt: initialized.
heartbeat=30 sec (nowayout=0)
Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [ 22.114275] dcdbas dcdbas: Dell Systems
Management Base Driver (version 5.6.0-3.2)
Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [ 22.227213] battery: ACPI: Battery Slot
[BAT1] (battery present)
Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [ 22.665955] intel_powerclamp: No
package C-state available
Is any of that helpful for working out what might be wrong?
Thanks for any advice
Graham
